We’re back again with another one.  Today, all eyes will be on 23-year-old Taleia Lewis, a Raleigh, N.C. native who now resides in ATL and she’s made her debut in the industry with her YouTube music video!

Q: How long have you been singing?

A: I’ve been singing since I was six years old.

Q: Are you strictly a singer/songwriter or do you have other talents?

A: Not only a singer and songwriter, but I like to think of myself as a creator and director!  I enjoy dance and every single form of the arts.

Q: What was it that originally attracted you to the music industry and who were your

major influences?

A: What attracted me to music was actually the passion behind it all. The energy that goes in it and comes from it!  (My) major influences, to be honest I really can’t pick.  I really respect every artist and their craft, from the mainstream to the underground.  I feed off of all their energy and respect the beauty of everyone’s craft. Because everyone brings something different and to me one person’s perspective is just as awesome as the next!

Q: So, who are some of the top mainstream artists that you would like to work with and
why?

A: As far as top mainstream artists I would love to work with would be Ceelo, Adele, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, Brittney Spears, Drake, and the list goes on…

Q: You’ve already got your first video out on YouTube, but how many more do you plan to produce there? Are you planning to make your mark as a YouTube phenomenon to get discovered or do you have other goals?

A: There will be many more videos to come and each video will give you a better idea of who I am! To be discovered on YouTube would be awesome, but I also have other goals I’m trying to reach when it comes down to becoming a household name in the industry.

Q: What do you project for your career in the next 10 years?

A: In the next 10 years, I will be a household name in the industry.  You will also see me branch off into other fields as well, such as acting and (more).

Q: What went into producing your first video—as far as mental preparation to put yourself out there, were there financial expenses for production, working with whoever helped you produce it, etcetera…?

A: It took a lot of patience and self motivation and money, but mainly the first two were what really mattered.  Everything else came along during the process.  Money is going to always play a factor in what you want to do, but you can’t let that stop you just because you don’t have that in your hands at that moment.  Because again finances came, my team came along, I had many blessings on my side!

Q: Do you have any inspirational words for other young women who aspire to do what you're doing?

A: Do what you’re proud of!  Make your own opportunity instead of looking or waiting for one!  For the ladies, have your own, don’t depend on anyone else! Also, life is about choices, as long as you can choose the 5 Ws—who, what, when, where, why—and take action with positive energy behind it, there will be no stopping you!

Taleia will soon have her website available for all of her fans, but in the meantime, you can contact her and follow her progress on the road to stardom via her Facebook page or her Twitter @Taleia1.

June has gone by waaay faster than expected and I'm still moving forward with the works while enjoying the summer. 

"Illicit Liberties"  is being colored and I hope to find a publisher ASAP so that it will be coming to a store near you or at least a ebook soon enough.  I'm currently still working on "Ascension", which I intend to produce as a novel, and "Missing Links", which will be a graphic novel and hopefully carry an anthology. 

I have stalled for the longest with posting it, since I was waiting for feedback from my "writer's network", but I take their silence as a nod of approval, and I have now posted "Xero" (a working title)  on the "Clutter" page.  "Xero", gives a look at a (possible) future where the Age of the Adams (humans) is ending and the survival of all life on Earth could be dependent on every living being converting into a cyber organic creature known as a Xero.  I originally intended for this story to just be a random short, but I kind of became  infatuated with the concept of the story.  So, there could be more to come, including a new title, for "Xero" in the near future.

Hopefully, there will be more updates for the site including more short stories and more frequent Q&A features with some great up-and-coming creative minds.

So, while I was reading a chapter of Zetman, a Japanese comic, I suddenly found myself hearing the song “More Than I Can Bear” by Kirk Franklin in my head.

For those who are unfamiliar with Zetman (and I’m sure there are many), it’s a series that follows the lives of two rival heroes; one who is blessed to be the heir to a mega corporation and who uses various gadgets to meet his goal to become a “friend of justice”, and one who is a genetically engineered superhuman who lives the majority of his life homeless.  It’s a real Batman-Supermanesque style story with the mortal billionaire and the super-powered farm boy parallel, but I don’t want to digress too far from my main point.

In my reading, I began to reflect on my own life experiences and the stories of other people that I’ve had the honor and disappointment of meeting in my lifetime.  I began to think about the different situations that people find themselves in everyday.  I thought of how some people are born into families that are blessed with great wealth, some people have their greatest challenges in their social lives while in grade school, and some people live their whole lives happily alone.  All of these things going through my head at once lead me to one conclusion:  Because God knows us better than we know ourselves, He knows how strong we are and how strong we are capable of becoming in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual sense.  So in turn, He knows what trials we can endure and prevail in to make us stronger, and as Kirk Franklin’s song suggests, He would never put more on us than we can bear. 

Every lot a person is thrown in life is a trial to simply make them better.  So instead of envying the luck of others who never seem to fall to hardships, maybe it’s better to think that God chose you to endure your own hardships because He already knew you were strong enough to take it.  On the path to greatness, for some it will be harsher, but the path to heaven is not easy for people of this world either.

“I believe in intuition and inspiration.  Imagination is more important than knowledge.  For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.  It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”  This was said by one of the greatest scientific minds in history—Albert Einstein.  I believe there have probably been very few statements that could be truer, unless you’re looking at the Bible.   

Often what we learn is based on the knowledge of others, but if it were not for imagination we would not have the impetus to innovate what we have today.  Too often people tend to regurgitate what they have heard either from an authority figure, the media, their family or whoever, however they seem to forget to think for themselves.  Too often people get lost in what they think they know when they believe they’ve found the answers, but isn’t it better to be the ones to create the answers for ourselves?

The greatest artists in the world may know how to craft a masterful painting but they can’t create without inspiration.  “The Powers That Be” in Hollywood know all of the ins and outs to creating a billion-dollar blockbuster but it requires those with an active imagination for those with the knowhow to be enabled to put their knowledge to use.  Words that we used today were commonly only seen in literature or used in the vernacular before they were accepted as part of the common English language.

A child would naturally use their imagination because every person is born with no knowledge of the world that they come into.  The imaginative spark can be kindled into an all-consuming force that can (and has) changed the world for the better (and sometimes the worst).  It doesn’t take a genius to become an originator of an idea.  IQ scores are not a factor of imagination.  Whether a person possesses book smarts or street smarts, it can all be the same in a world of your own creations.

Ingenuity. Inspiration. Visualization.  Artistry.  Fantasy. Wit.  Inventiveness.  Fabrication.  Creation.  Conception.  IMAGINATION.

Sorry I’m late, but for May, the spotlight is on Sue Edelberg, a 26-year-old singer, songwriter, quasi-poet, journalist, blogger, and occasional DJ for WXDU at Duke University who likes cats, square dancing and gardening  (and she’s also a fellow AmeriCorps VISTA!).

 Sue Edelberg is the youngest member of Cat Toy, a five-year-old local band that has its roots around the Durham-Chapel Hill area.  The group, which also includes three other members, often practices in Mebon, N.C. at Duck Kee Studios, owned by Cat Toy’s own Jerry Kee.  Kee has made a living of recording local bands around the Triangle at his studio, but he also plays the mandolin and guitar for Cat Toy in his spare time.  Billy Sugarfix, the bass player for Cat Toy who is described as a local celebrity, also performs with his own band called Billy Sugarfix’s Carousel that has performed across the Triangle, especially around Durham and Chapel Hill.  The final member of the band is Sarah Reichman, the front-woman of the band and Edelberg’s “mentor”.  After meeting each other at WXDU a little over a year ago, Reichman began training Edelberg with her voice and shortly after their meeting Reichman would also invite her to join the local group.  Reichman has worked in radio for over 25 years and she is also a music promoter.

Q: All of you seem to have your own things going on, so how does the collaborative with the band work out and what is the band’s overall goal?

A:  Well, it seems that we don’t have a goal.  We’ve only actually played one show in over a year.  Really we just play just to play.  We just enjoy it.  It’s more of just a nice release, a nice change of pace.  I think it’s more like mental health.  But our goal is to eventually put out a little demo, promote ourselves and play shows occasionally.  I guess we haven’t really taken the time or initiative to do promotion because when you play music, sometimes really just want to do the music.  Right now in my life, I’m not really interested in promoting, I used to love promoting but I’m just really busy with other things in my life right now.

Q: So where does your passion in music lie and what types of genres are you interested in, you personally?

A:  As a singer-songwriter, I am definitely interested in acoustic music, acoustic Indy rock.  I just really love, love this stuff that’s on college radio right now because it’s coming from all over the country, but I really like the stuff from the Pacific Northwest;  K-Records is really great.  I like artists like Death Cab for Cutie and Ben Gibbards in his solo projects, and that kind of stuff inspires me when I see people doing something similar to what I’m doing.  At the same time, I really love electronic music, techno people, Indy rock, and I really got into bluegrass and old-time music.

Q:  As far as your singing and songwriting, do you contribute that to the band or is it more like a separate endeavor where you write songs for yourself?

A:  That’s actually a totally separate endeavor.  The band, they have written some of their own songs already and we do some covers so I sing back-up vocals and I do drums.  For myself, the singer-songwriter thing is just something personal that I’ve always done.

Q: So with your own personal thing and with the band, do you use the same style or do you use a different style of your own as opposed to working with the others?

A:  Yeah, I think it’s pretty different.  The band, we’re kind of like oldie, “loungey” ‘90s rock music and my style is like very falsetto and harmonies.  My higher range has gotten a lot better, so by myself I’ve been doing a lot more pretty sounding stuff.  Even though it’s acoustic, I kind of have more of like a rocker style of singing, a little more raw.

Q: You were talking about promotion earlier.  So do you feel like it’s easier to promote yourself or to have something put out there, now that we’re in this digital age and all, have you ever thought about producing something that way?

A:  Yeah.  I have some recordings of myself and I haven’t really put myself out there but I haven’t really felt complete and I don’t have a whole bunch of material, like an album’s worth of material, so I was going to wait either until I had an album’s worth and/or a partner.  I’m more motivated when I have a partner in crime, I think.  I’ve been marketing myself through open-mike nights, but I’m not doing it for fame anyway, I’m doing it more for an outlet for me.

Sue stated that if she continues to hone her talents in songwriting and singing she believes that she would have the potential to be pretty well-received in the general public.  As her own biggest critic, Sue said that once she believes her work is great she knows everyone else will.  She is a proponent for open-mike nights as well and she recommends it to all aspiring songwriters. 

“Go to open-mike nights," she said.  "Go to as many open-mike nights as you can, because that is a great way to try out your confidence level, to try out performing in front of people, try out your sound system, and it’s a great way to meet people, especially potential musical partners.  I would definitely say do not just play songs in your bedroom.  Get out there.  It’s different. 

“And really get involved in your local music community.  You meet people by [supporting] local bands, going to local shows, because the community is really focused around those small shows and it’s a great way to get involved and also bring your music to the community.  It’s a very intimate community so it’s not impossible to become a performing artist at all.  It’s really easy and it’s just about being a supportive community member.”